English? Who needs that?

July 6, 2008 //

Homer Simpson may never have been to England, but I have been, and I’m sad to report that the standard of written English here is by turns both gratifyingly eloquent and witty (take this restaurant review—one of the best I’ve ever read) and breathtakingly appalling.

In the past I’ve left it to other bloggers to document public displays of shoddy English (my friend Christina, for instance), but this one really cheesed me. From HM Revenue & Customs’ P11D Expenses And Benefits form:

Note to employee
Your employer has filled in this form, keep it in a safe place. You will need it to complete your 2007-08 Tax Return if you get one. The box numberings on this P11D are the same as on the Employment Page of the Tax Return for example, 13.

If I spot a run-on sentence in the window of a kebab shop, or “deep fried crap” on a Thai menu, I have a chuckle, while remembering that my command of Turkish or Thai could never rival their slightly imperfect English. Reading it on an official UK government form, though, is just wrong, and, since moving here, this is just one example I’ve seen of what I like to call Enguish. I haven’t been keeping track—it’d be too depressing— but maybe someone could start a website (www.enguish.com is available) and shine a light not on the demonstrations of beleaguered foreigners, but supposed native-English-speakers and their own inexcusable and inexorable decline.

Our province has just grown by five feet

June 17, 2008 //

So I’m not sure what’s happened to BC since we left, but apparently those of you still living on the West Coast have had to deal with a rash of human feet washing up on shore? Huh? I mean, insert X-Files joke here, but what are you crazy kids up to back there?

The best, though, has to be this quote from an “expert” on the Yahoo Canada news feed:

Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer based in Seattle, Wash., said when a human body is submerged in the ocean, the main parts like arms, legs, hands, feet and the head are usually what come off the body.

Well, I’m no expert, but that covers… well… pretty much everything that could come off a body, I guess. Lesson learned: a closed mouth gathers no feet.

That’s island life

March 13, 2008 //

An early start. Up to catch the bus to Aird Mhor jetty to catch the ferry to Eriskay, only to find it cancelled due to high winds. “Come back at noon,” the bus driver translated the ferry-hand’s sweeping pseudo-semaphore from the on-ramp where we stood. “That’s island life,” shrugged the only other person on the bus, an old lady, who presumably has seen her fair share of grounded ferries.

Back to Castlebay then, to camp out in the hostel living room until the next attempt. The owner’s mother-in-law, another nice old lady on an island full of nice old ladies, is busy cleaning up. We get onto the topic of poor John the bipolar Glaswegian, fate unknown. “You get a lot of people with emotional problems coming to Barra,” she says in her easy twitter. “They either get better, because of the island, or it becomes too much for them and they just crack up entirely.” She has such a comforting voice that I almost miss that last bit.

It was suggested to me that I phone the ferry office at Lochboisdale in Uist, to confirm the 1230 sailing, since the Castlebay office would be closed around noon for a funeral. A bit of a local celebrity, the man who founded the local Search and Rescue passed away yesterday. Slave to the bus schedule again, I’ve got a 2-minute window between confirmation and catching the jetty bus. “Et’s a goooh! Get on that boos!” the jolly Scotsman shouts through my mobile, and I’m off, racing down to the stop, only to find the bus sitting full and with no intention of moving. “Oh, you’ll never make the ferry. I can’t move: funeral coming through town,” she shrugs, and like that, I’m stuck on Barra for another day: the one road out of town, blocked by the funeral procession for a man who helped stranded people.

Still, if you have to be stuck somewhere, Barra’s not a bad option. The bus to Vatersay was unaffected, so off I went. This little island off Barra is the southernmost inhabited island in the whole Hebridean chain and was, before 1990, only reachable by boat. Cattle farmers would swim their cattle across the little sound to Barra. Disaster one day when Bernie the prized heffer got swept away; the causeway came in shortly after. The ruined hulk of Vatersay House loomed over the only settlement on the island. Not a soul in sight as I got off the bus and made southwards.

Eorasdail village, Vatersay

I criss-crossed Vatersay that afternoon, stumbling through the rolling fields and barren outcroppings, dodging cowpats and freak hailstorms. A ghost village called Eorasdail to the south overlooks the ocean. Hard to believe it was only abandoned in the 70s: eerie stone gables are all that’s left, like unnamed tombstones staring blankly at the sea. Back to the north is a single obelisk, monument to a nasty shipwreck in 1853. The Annie Jane, bound for Canada, went down with more than 400 men, women, and children aboard. Something in how they’ve maintained this marker, on a deserted, windswept hill over a choppy bay, on an island with 70 residents and few visitors, seemed to lend it more poignancy and gravity than the memorials we pass in hectic cities, usually without a second thought.

For all its foibles, island life holds a pretty powerful draw. As an outsider ignorant of all the issues, mind; I’ve heard it’s an economically depressed area—that many are gravitating towards the mainland for the opportunities it represents. At the same time, people are moving to the Hebrides as well, perhaps seeing the same things I’ve seen. Passing motorists wave hello. Old ladies chat with you on the bus. The air smells like the clean, deep ocean, not the crushing, body-odour of civilisation. And for a brief, beautiful moment, a ray of sun lights up a derelict village, chimneys cold and veined with moss against the sky. “Island life” with a shrug: because in the end, better to be stuck on Barra because your boat didn’t sail, than at the bottom of the bay because it did.

Swept away

March 12, 2008 //

Much is made of Barra being this encapsulated summary of all that’s good about the Hebrides: beaches, history, scenery, great hikes, friendly people, etc. So where to begin? Excited by the prospect of piles of rocks thousands of years old, I made my way north up the island, past the airport that uses the beach for a runway (nice), to Cille Bhara, a little church where all the MacNeills are buried (even the overseas ones). From there, I’d make my way towards another, newer church, up a hill to, theoretically, an old dun (cairn), overlooking the bit of water between Barra and the next island up the chain, Eriskay.

The stunning view from the wrong hill

Map in hand, past the old church, towards the new church, where there should be a gate with a path leading up the hill. Check. Through the gate, up the hill, and, 20 minutes of head-scratching later, I conclude I’ve got the wrong church, gate, and subsequently hill. My dun sat mockingly on the opposite hilltop. Turns out on this 1-mile stretch of road on the sparsely inhabited end of an island that only has 1000 inhabitants to begin with, there are three churches.

With the only bus servicing this part of the island making its last run soon, I had to go. Down the other side of the hill was a nice looking bit of beach facing west towards the North Atlantic that would lead me back past Cille Bhara to the bus stop. After a good slog, I arrived at the beach, dropped my camera bag, turned around, and scrambled back up Wrong Hill because I’d left my gloves up top. After searching Wrong Ledges 1, 2, and 3, I find them with little time to spare. Sprinting down the hill, I notice the waterline’s moved a lot closer to where I’d ditched my gear.

Swish-swishing my way down the beach, watching that ominous tide, I made it halfway along the nice, dry beach before, in an instant, I found myself up to my thighs in North Atlantic seawater. Not the biggest fan of water at the best of times, in full-on panic-mode I scrambled madly across whatever rocks I could find above water level, dragging my gear, my ridiculously unuseful tripod, and my sadly waterlogged but increasingly comical “waterproof” pants up a cut in the dune and into a field.

At this point, I fancied I deserved a rest, given my near-fatal encounter with a cruel sea in my race against tide. Two things made me get up and sprint across the field for the bus stop:

if I didn’t make the bus, it’d be a 10-mile walk to the hostel
it wasn’t exactly like I’d been trapped on Everest, or plane-wrecked in the Andes and had to eat my rugby team or anything. I was just feeling sorry for myself and my stupid, futile pants.

Scraped, fatigued, drenched and with half a barnful of hay clinging to my trousers, I arrived at the bus stop, heaving but fiendishly proud to be right on schedule.

The bus pulled up, 15 minutes later.

I still love Barra, though.

Unflushable

March 10, 2008 //

Governed by logistical details, bordering on paranoia, I still manage to have fun; and more often than not, things work out in the end anyway. Case in point: the weather. Basically all my posts leading up to the trip have had to do with securing waterproof pants, given the schizophrenic North Atlantic weather. Sure enough, the weather forecasts (and even the lead news items) these past few days: flooding, £millions in damage, and rampant chaos, but never you mind! On the weather radar, while the whole of Wales and the south of England lie beneath 10 feet of water, with rains unseen since Old Testament times, we’ve had nothing but sun in Barra for the past few days. The talking head just reported swans being washed away in a town called Flushing. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Divine mission

March 8, 2008 //

Sound of Mull

Another nick-of-time sprint for Victoria Coach Station landed me on the overnight to Glasgow, where I’d be catching another bus to Oban: quaintly seaside and port for the 5-hour Calmac ferry that would, nearly 24 hours after the initial dash, deposit me in the village of Castlebay, Barra, from where I’d begin my trip northward. The adventure (or at least the sleeplessness) began on the coach. A temporary, alcohol-fueled stay of xenophobia spurred the Preston supporters next to me, down to London for the football, to attempt conversation with a group of Poles inexplicably bound for Perth (Scotland, not Australia). They were a jolly bunch, though; they’d lost their friend in the post-match drinking melée and, when it came time to head home, abandoned him in London to the rough sleepers and free-newspaper hawkers. “We hate London,” they confided. Even if their friend didn’t before, bedding down on a park bench after being ditched by his buddies would surely have him seconding that. We chugged along to Glasgow, leaving a trail of dazed passengers at Preston and a series of nameless towns behind us in the night.

Oban seemed pretty much the same since I was last there, 8 years ago. In fact, so little had changed that I was bamboozled again by what I call the “Scottish Burger Paradox”. In a past life I’d walked into a chippy there and ordered a “beefburger”. This turned out to be two battered, deep-fried patties in greaseproof paper, buns conspicuously absent. This time, I walked into a restaurant and ordered a “venison burger”: lunch that day was two juicy patties, on a hill of mashed potatoes. I think buns in Scotland are shy and don’t like to be eaten: somewhere in the Highlands there’s a lost colony of survivors, bread products who’ve escaped their fate and live together in a slightly moldy but utopian society.

Five hours of ocean swells, half-sleep, and fevered, yeasty maunderings later we’d crossed the Sea of the Hebrides. Walked off the ferry, onto the jetty and into the darkened village. The breeze had freshened a bit; my ludicrously overpacked bag provided the ballast to keep me from getting blown away into the departing ferry’s wake.

The hostel was a little clean, well-lighted place facing the inky bay. There I met John the bipolar Glaswegian. He never married: the lost love of his life, a Barra woman, spurned him because he’s Protestant and she was, as most Barra people are, Catholic. Like a true tourist, wide-eyed and heartless, I thought “That’s great, my first tragic Scottish island story! I smell movie rights.” He went on to relate how he’d had a dream earlier that day, foretelling the arrival of a Chinese guy from Canada. He was to take the ferry to the mainland to seek medical help in the morning; apparently I was a sign from God that He was watching over him.

Heaven-sent but utterly fatigued, I collapsed into bed and only woke the next morning when the village constable came through the hostel, gathering up John’s things. He’d been airlifted to Glasgow early; we never heard what happened to him. 24 hours into my trip and I’d already been entrusted with a divine mission. Travelling through this isolated, most palpably religious part of Scotland, it wouldn’t be the last time I’d have a near-God experience.

Swish swish

March 4, 2008 //

My replacement waterproof ski-cum-hiking trousers arrived today, so I don’t need to pack the corset anymore. Supreme-o waistband satisfaction as I swish-swish my way through the Hebridean sleet. Now I have to figure out whether to take the 70L or 60L backpack, since these new comfort pants take up half the pack I was planning to use. With the dry provisions I’ve been squirreling away for the last few weeks, I barely have room for anything else, like clothing. So, bare-chested AND waistband satisfaction as I push through the boggy mudfields. This trip could be called Ski Pants and Sardines in Tomato Sauce: A Hebridean Picnic.

Nazma brought up a good point, that I might want to bring along a pair of trousers that don’t swish-swish as I walk. I’d toyed with the idea of going to a church service on Sunday, since staunch Presbyterianism is such a big part of the culture (with everything shut down, what else is there to do?). But aside from the intrusion my presence would already be, the last thing the islanders need is a Chinese kid rustling away in the back pew, like I’d started a parachute-packing factory in the nave.

Waterproof Urkel

February 29, 2008 //

Although some of the stone-circle sites in Lewis will be just off the main roads, I’m more interested in remote locations, and that involves traipsing through bogs and probable muddy situations. So I ordered a pair of waterproof, fleecy-lined trousers off eBay, which arrived today. Great quality for £6, but oops, they’re size small. Aside from the tragic muffin-topping, they’re about 2 inches too short. Now I’m not looking to win any style contests, but their sole purpose was to shield me from the peaty messes and horizontal rains. At least my knees will stay dry while my boots slowly fill up with marshy goodness.

Geriatric ass tricks

February 26, 2008 //

I was on a flight recently, and aside from having to arrive at the airport 3 hours before, divvy up all our liquids into 100mL portions, and partially disrobe in front of a strangely unappreciative metal-detector queue (everyone’s a critic), the flight was fine. The atmosphere wasn’t as close and cattle-car in character as some other budget airlines we’ve been on.

Through the boarding scrum, bypassing the slow-moving people who don’t know or don’t care that they’re destined for middle seats within stench-radius of the toilets, we always make for the middle of the small 3-3 planes, looking out for emergency-exit seats for the (often only perceived) extra legroom. We usually find these seats already occupied and jealously guarded by lanky single men, so we often end up a few rows behind. This is usually a pretty nondescript area to sit in, with neither first choice from the drinks trolley nor the right to gripe because there’s nothing but lukewarm tomato juice left. Most of all, since you’re equidistant to both lavs, you should never get hip-checked mid-nap by some incontinent passenger, since in theory they should always be headed away from you.

This time, though, the middle of the plane was exactly where the exercisers wanted to be. You know the ones: typically overweight, sweaty package-tourists who’ve read somewhere that long flights = potential for sudden brain death. Boo to blood clots, I say—but usually I’m already so self-conscious about appearing in front of audiences that I’ll limit myself to a quick scamper to the lav, weaving through the Weekend-at-Bernie’s-style obstacle course.

Airsick bag used for blog entry (thankfully not for airsickness)

And so cruising altitude meant a succession of airborne wobbly-kneed lunging-enthusiasts. Truly, in any other context, no one would ever put their bum so close to a stranger’s face without some deeply suppressed childhood trauma to back it up. And don’t think this was solely a floor show: the interactive portion involved executing weird, standing push-ups off of my chair back, the springiness of which nearly pitched me into the warm perspiratory enfoldings of those generous posteriors. Resigned, I buckled in and clung desperately to my armrests; I didn’t need the “Fasten Seatbelt” sign to tell me it was going to be a long and turbulent flight.

Easy on the Hs, please

February 22, 2008 //

Spent most of today wading through the Byzantine schedules for the Western Isles buses, trying to piece together a workable route northward. It’s a tricky business because many services run only 3 or 4 times a day, if at all (Sunday, being a day of rest for everyone else, actually means I’ll be walking like 20 miles that day). It’s menial but the puzzle of it keeps me distracted, and it’s a great way to learn more about where you’re headed. Crossing the timetables with the library’s gigantic laminated OS maps, connecting up stops with cryptic Gaelic place-names overflowing with consonantal bounty, some vague kind of sense (both route-wise and linguistically) starts to emerge, even if pronunciation remains an issue. Compare “South Galson” in English with its Gaelic equivalent “Gabhsann bho Dheas”. I could never bring myself to dislike any language that looks like someone poured out a bag of Scrabble tiles and said “yep, that’s the name of our town then”.

Planes, trains and automobiles

Booked all my tickets today for the mainland legs, at least. Most importantly, rather than 20 minutes at best, now I’ll have a few hours in Inverness on the return leg, so no getting into town late just to watch the London-bound service motoring into the distance. I can even get dinner now. I’ve managed to sidestep the feverish change by booking a “bargain berth” on the Caledonian Sleeper train, leaving me bleary-eyed but hopefully rested in London the next morning not a mile from home. Travelling solo means instead of Sleeptalking Nazma in the bottom bunk, it’s a lucky dip whom I’ll get in my cabin. The last time this happened was in Vietnam, when we ended up with Typhoon-Snoring-But-Likable-Guy-From-Ontario. Though it can’t beat my 8-hour exercise in sleep-deprivation back in 2000, trapped sitting-up between two unyielding Scotsmen at the back of an London-Edinburgh coach, tearing far too slowly through the night.